


The House and the Sea

by tehtarik



Category: Siren (TV 2018)
Genre: Domestic, F/F, F/M, Mermaids, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Multi, fluff??, post Season 1 finale, set a few weeks after the season 1 finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 03:29:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14886780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tehtarik/pseuds/tehtarik
Summary: “Ben is not with me,” Maddie said. She didn't offer any further explanation.Ryn pulled her gaze back to Maddie. She had the biggest eyes ever. They sat in her face, those round robin eggs of eyes. Unblinking, fragile, waiting to hatch into hairless twiggy birds that would squirm out of her eye sockets. But there was nothing birdlike about Ryn.“Helen let me stay here.” Ryn turned to face the log and stone cabin behind. “She visits often.”“She told me that.”“I am trying to make my own life here, in this house.”“Yeah?” said Maddie again, smiling. “Let's see it, then.”-------------------Some weeks later, Maddie goes to visit Ryn.





	The House and the Sea

Maddie passed Donna’s grave on the way to the house.

“You know the way. Head west out of town, about a mile past the sign,” Helen had told her, looking up from the yellowing ledger book on the counter of her antiques shop. She took her reading glasses off and delicately scrubbed her eyelid with the edge of her thumbnail.

“And after that?” Maddie had asked, both hands on the counter, trying to ignore the intense scrutiny of Helen’s expression.

“Abandon all hope, all ye who enter.” Helen’s smiling eyes and straight mouth did not change. “You just have to go further.”

“That’s your house she’s living in?”

“It is.” Helen snapped her ledger shut. “Better that she’s there, away from the town. Urban areas have never been good for her people.”

“I’m going to visit her.”

“Just you?”

“Just to check on her.”

So that was what Maddie did. She drove out of town, past the _Welcome to Bristol Cove_ sign, turned into a dirt road and found a trailhead, obscured by ferns, and recognised it. Helen had led them all here some weeks ago: her and Ben and Ryn.

The trail ribboned through old growth stands of elderberry and Sitka spruce, the ground rucked with roots and softened by the rains. She hopscotched along a barrier of small boulders plugging off a section of the bay into a brackish lagoon, and on the other side, continued her hike until she arrived at a familiar clearing at the top of a hill. There was a view into the next bay, a fat blue-grey tongue of water lapping at the coastline. Below, the sea smacked against the rock, filling the crevices at the foot of the cliff, before being sucked back out, whistling like a wraith.

This was where Donna’s grave lay. This land was both sacred Haida burial grounds and mermaid cemetery. The resting place of Ryn and Donna’s people and Helen’s ancestors. Maybe even Ben’s. Those who came from the depths of the ocean and then beached themselves into their new stumbling bipedal lives beyond the waves.

Maybe there had once been names on most of the graves, but the winds must have taken those as well, licked the words clean from the headstones. Or maybe names were the property of human language, and thus were never written on these stones.

Donna’s grave was at the foot of a slouching hemlock tree. The last time Maddie was here, there had been a single shell in front of the stone marker. Now, there were forty-two. Whorls of pink and cream and brown. Narrow coiled turrets of shells. The thin grooved fans of scallops. The ribbed curved valves of cockles. The graduations of violet of common clams. There were shells with yawning apertures revealing their silver-green nacre. There were enormous spiky conchs. Hardly the typical shells that washed ashore.

Maddie left the clearing and continued along the trail for another twenty minutes or so, going downhill, until she stepped out of the forest, onto the seaweed-strewn shore.

There was a house there, a small cabin with stone walls and a frame of cedar logs, set between the curve of the bay and the surrounding coastal forest.

“Hello?” Maddie called as she approached.

From the back of the house, slowly, cautiously, Ryn emerged.

When she saw Maddie, she picked up the pace until she was practically flying across the beach toward her.

Maddie almost expected Ryn to fling herself at her, to be bowled over by Ryn’s deceptively slight form. But just before making contact, Ryn stopped short.

“Hello, Ryn.”

“Maddie,” Ryn said. “Hello. You are here to visit?”

“To see how you’ve been,” Maddie answered.

Ryn was in an oversized maroon and grey flannel shirt that hung down to her thighs. Her hair was stringy beneath a woollen beanie with a sunny yellow bobble at the top. A quick smile twitched across her mouth, chased by a frown, followed by a long fixed stare past Maddie’s shoulder, into the forest beyond.

“Ben is not with me,” Maddie said. She didn't offer any further explanation.

Ryn pulled her gaze back to Maddie. She had the biggest eyes ever. They sat in her face, those round robin eggs of eyes. Unblinking, fragile, waiting to hatch into hairless twiggy birds that would squirm out of her eye sockets. But there was nothing birdlike about Ryn.

“Helen let me stay here.” Ryn turned to face the log and stone cabin behind. “She visits often.”

“She told me that.”

“I am trying to make my own life here, in this house.”

“Yeah?” said Maddie again, smiling. “Let's see it, then.”

Inside, the house was all clutter. Heat swam snug from the wood burner. Clothes lay in piles on the floor, or draped over the backs of chairs. Magazines and books scattered on the table. On the windowsill, salt and pepper shakers crowded for space with dozens of wooden carvings and enamel mugs. An empty fruit bowl filled with cutlery and marbles and squashed Sun-Maid raisin packets. Cushions and rugs strewn on the floor. Maddie could imagine Ryn rifling through the drawers and cupboards when she’d first entered the house, examining everything in detail, the minutiae of being human, and then dumping them wherever she saw fit.

In the kitchen, Maddie found a few tins of sardines, a bag of instant coffee powder, and two packets of crackers.

She tore open one of the packets. “Are you hungry?”

Ryn had once told her that when she’d first ventured onto land, she’d eaten rats. Rats and squirrels -- small, quick rodents that her quicker hands snatched out of their holes, their flesh and fur catching in the gaps between her blunt human teeth.

“Yes,” said Ryn. She was right at Maddie’s shoulder, watching her every move with the greatest interest.

They had sardines on crackers, once Maddie found the can-opener jammed into the slots of the toaster (which was on the bookshelf).

Ryn loved the sardines. She got tomato sauce splotches on her chin. The crackers were stale.

“I passed your sister’s grave on the way here,” said Maddie. “I like what you’ve done with it. The shells, I mean. There are a lot of them.”

It wasn’t the cleverest thing to say, but Maddie was restless; it had been more than a month since she’d seen Ryn, and now once again, she was confronted with the enigma of Ryn, and riddles made her restless, curious. Besides, she needed to distract herself from this very average meal.

Ryn looked up from her food. “Forty-two shells. One shell for each day after sister.”

Later, Maddie plonked herself down on the couch, which appeared to be where Ryn slept every night, even though there was a perfectly good bed in the next room. Ryn settled beside her, pulled her knees to her chin and pressed in close against Maddie.

“You’re acting like you want me to read you a story,” Maddie laughed.

She’d meant it as a joke, but Ryn perked up. “Yes, okay. I would like that.”

“I was just--never mind.”

Ryn grabbed the nearest book, which was a February 2004 issue of _National Geographic_ and dropped it onto Maddie's lap.

Maddie shrugged and flipped open to the centre of the magazine. “This isn’t going to be a Dr. Seuss story, so brace yourself.”

She read out loud for ages. She rattled on and on through articles about the Sonoran Desert and upland agricultural practices in the mountains of Peru and the ivory trade and the Bajau people of Borneo. She began to get sleepy and skip words, but it didn’t matter to Ryn, who listened without a word. When she finally put away the magazine, evening was falling fast, and a light rain spattered against the windows.

“I’d better get going.” Maddie pulled on her jacket. “I gotta get through the trail before it gets completely dark.”

“It is raining,” said Ryn.

“Looks like it.”

“Humans don't like to get wet.”

Maddie patted her raincoat. “That's what this is for.”

“I want you to stay."

Maddie was surprised.

Ryn tried again, her expression beseeching. “Please can you stay.”

Maddie took off her jacket and hung it back up on the hook. “Guess I can.”

  


 

 

In the crooks of her elbows, under her arms, the sweep of her spine: the thrill of salt. Not the epidermal salt of sweat or tears, but iron-deep, mineral-rich salt from her blood, the sea buried in her blood. Ryn’s skin was warm -- a little dry, a little rough, maybe because Maddie imagined the memory of scales. Ryn nosed along the slide of Maddie's neck, scraped her lips on her throat. The tip of her tongue left a warm wet stripe from collarbone to chin. Ryn crawled on top of Maddie, straddled her waist and looked down at her, hair a dishevelled drape with split ends that tickled Maddie's cheeks. 

Her eyes were eager, brighter than usual.

“I _love_ you,” she said in a tone that was strangely cheerful that Maddie couldn't help smiling.

“Love you too.”

Maddie arched and accommodated Ryn’s exploration of her body as patiently as she could, but it took time. It was a while before Ryn figured out how she could bring Maddie to the edge, but when she finally did, Maddie felt a long wave of euphoria roll through her limbs, flatten her into the sheets. She lay, motionless and marvelling, unwilling to move, listening to Ryn breathing beside her.  
  


 

 

When Ryn said, _I love you_ , did she mean it, or was it merely part of her learning curve? Was she imitating Maddie and Ben as they had once been, or was it a genuine response, or was it a conflation of both? And how could Maddie even tell?

They had done this before in the past, but Ben had been there every time. All those months ago, when Ryn decided that she shouldn’t sleep alone on the couch any longer, slipped into their bed and wedged herself between Ben and Maddie.

Before Ryn, Maddie and Ben were fluent around each other. They knew each other’s peeves. They made unspoken agreements with each other. Their routines braided into sensible cohabitation. Mutualism. They knew when to get take-out, when to do the romantic dinner thing, whose turn to do data monitoring at the marine wildlife rehabilitation centre, whose turn to clean out the pails or feed the seals. They knew when to be quiet, when to have sex in the shower, when to just spoon and fall asleep without asking more of each other. And then Ryn came between them, without asking, and shook all their little arrangements up. Ryn made them awkward around each other. They dropped things, walked into each other a couple of times, fumbled under her scrutiny.

“Hey, Maddie,” Ben had said one morning, coffee mug gripped between his hands, when she entered the kitchen, as though she was a rather distant relative who had come to stay as a guest.

Her reply was no better. ‘Good morning, Ben.”

And Ryn echoed, with more certainty than either of them: “Good morning. Ben-and-Maddie.”  
  
  


 

 

“What’s the first step in keeping a vegetable garden?” Maddie asked Dale. She ladled more mushroom sauce onto Dale’s plate. Tonight’s dinner was mushroom chicken and broccoli.

“You’re not thinking to take up a new hobby?” Dale gave her an appraising look.

She forked a floret of broccoli into her mouth. “Sorry Dad. Not giving up on the seals anytime soon.”

“I’m no good with plants, Maddie. I thought that was more your thing.”

It wasn’t, really. Maddie had graduated with a Masters in marine biology; her thesis had been about pinniped foraging and feeding ecology. Botany wasn’t her strong suit.

Dinner was slow and Maddie fell into a kind of lull. It was good to be home, to be back with her dad.

“You seen Ben lately?” Dale asked.

“Not in a while. He's probably doing more work for his dad.” Maddie paused. “ I’ve seen Ryn, though.”

Dale got up, reached across the table for Maddie's empty dish and set them down by the sink. “She's still in town, then.”

“I know she’s not your favourite person--”

“That’s because _you’re_ my favourite person.”

They both laughed at that.

“She asked me to read _National Geographic_ to her.”

“Well, that’s right up your alley, isn’t it? I mean you published in there and all.”

“You mean my study in the _Journal of Marine Ecology_ ? Yeah, not the same thing as _National Geographic_.”

“Maddie,” said Dale. “I just want you to be safe.”

“I _am_ safe. Sometimes I think Ryn is more human than most of us. Just for actively trying.”

Dale rinsed off a few dishes and handed it to Maddie who dried it off with a dishcloth.

“I trust you, Mads. If you believe someone to be good, then they must be. Your mermaid friend, maybe she doesn't know that, though. _Good_ is a very human concept that nobody agrees about these days. And _some_ people,” Dale broke off and gave Maddie a very pointed look, “need reminding sometimes that they’re good.”

“Aww,” Maddie said. She bumped shoulders with him. “Look at you dropping the tough I’m-the-Sherriff-of-Bristol-Cove facade and going all soft on me.”

Dale let out a long exhalation. “Go sit down. Make some coffee for the both of us. Let me finish up.”

Maddie passed him the dishcloth. “Hey, maybe I should invite Ryn over for dinner one night.”

“Does that mean we’ll be having fish?” Dale said.

  
  
  


 

The next time Maddie went to visit Ryn, she packed a small holdall with some food. Potatoes. Bread. Carrots. Sausages. Packets of instant sauce. Cup noodles as well, though she wasn’t going to encourage Ryn to eat these unless absolutely necessary.

At the last moment, just before leaving, she packed her wetsuit in, along with her flippers and a neon-green snorkel. Just in case.

Later, when she passed by Donna’s grave again, she counted the shells. Still forty-two. A seed cone had fallen off the hemlock tree and was now ensconced in the middle of all those shells.

Ryn was overjoyed to see Maddie. “Maddie, you have come back. Good. I was getting--I was feeling--,”

She stopped and frowned. Maddie didn’t help her find the word.

“Helen’s been here recently?”

“Yes. She came this morning,” said Ryn. She looked puzzled. “She told me to tidy up the house. She has never told me this before. But it sounded important. I don’t understand why.”

Maddie laughed. “I’ll give you a hand later.”

They didn’t do much for awhile. Maddie explored the coastal forest behind the house, Ryn following closely, but not showing much interest in her surroundings. She toed some flat mushrooms off a rotting log, and stomped on the log and watched as earwigs and slaters came scuttling out of the decay. Maddie guessed that she had explored this area on her own, walked these trails until they bored her, searching for more traces of any historical connection between her own people and the land dwellers.

“I'm going for a swim,” Maddie announced, when they got back to the house. She dug her wetsuit out of her holdall, stripped off her clothes, and put it on. Zipped the back of it up. Ryn watched her.

“You're welcome to join me,” said Maddie again. The recklessness of her invitation sent her own heart beating faster than ever. She'd never been in the water with Ryn before.

Ben had, though. The first time had nearly cost him his life. The second time had bought him back his life.

“I won't go in the water if you are in it.”

“That’s okay.”

At the edge of her water, she put on her flippers and stomped through the shallows, snorkel in hand. Disappointment heavy in her chest. It was a probably a good thing, though. She didn’t even know why she’d asked Ryn. The ground sloped away steeply, and soon she was kicking through deep water, moving her arms in a fluid, swift front crawl.

“Maddie!” Ryn ‘s voice was thin from the shore.

“I'm right here,” Maddie called back, hearing her own voice spark with hope.

But Ryn didn’t move from the shore. She called out again, and then Maddie saw her turn her back to the water and head back up to the cabin.

She shook off another wave of disappointment and continued along her swim along the bay. Her body cut through the waves, split the sea with her strokes. Maybe she should swim to the end of the cove, to that line of boulders, horseshoeing around a promontory and disappearing into the next inlet. Ryn had told her that night when she’d first visited, after they’d lain in bed, languid, both of them wanting a little more but too worn out to do anything else, that her people had visited these coves and inlets long ago. They explored the shallows before the land-dwellers came to settle in the area. Sometimes they heaved themselves up on the boulders for a few minutes to spy on the birds that were not seabirds, to look into the depths of the forests that did not move like the tangled gardens of undersea kelp.

Maddie didn’t feel like swimming anymore. The sea had got a bit rougher, and the wind was picking up. She made it back to shore, towelled herself off and went into the cabin.

Ryn was curled up on the couch. Another book lay open on her lap, a glossy hardcover on interior design, the kind of coffee table book you found in waiting areas of various offices. She was tracing the shape of alphabets.

“Hey,” said Maddie.

“Did you have a good time?”

“Yeah, but I still wish you were there, though.”

Maddie cooked a stew that night using the potatoes and carrots and sausages, which she’d brought. They were both starving, so they practically inhaled it all. Maddie thought about asking Ryn to dinner at her house with Dale, but she couldn’t find the words to do it. The tone in the space between them didn’t seem quite right yet.  

That night, Maddie and Ryn lay on the couch, staring into the rafters, listening to the wind keening through the pine shingles on the roof. There was a distant snap from somewhere in the forest beyond -- maybe a large branch or a small tree being felled by the storm. The waves were louder than ever.

Ryn lay still against Maddie, her heartbeat so measured that it was almost dull, and didn’t seem interested in anything outside or inside.  
  


 

 

In the morning, Maddie untangled herself from Ryn, swung her feet off the couch and stepped ankle-deep, into water. The storm had chased the sea higher up into land, past the usual high tide level, and water had seeped under the door to swamp half the living area of the house. All the mess of the house, which nobody had cleared away in the end: cushions, rugs, magazines, piles of Ryn’s discarded laundry, furniture, anything that was on the floor --were either thoroughly soaked, or were floating in this new indoor marsh. The whole house was filled with the rusty living stench of the sea. 

“Water comes in sometimes,” said Ryn, shrugging. “It is hard to get away from the sea.”

“Now we’ll _really_ have to clean this up,” Maddie groaned. She picked up a morass of dripping clothes from the ground. Her jeans was among them.

So much for this fantasy of some kind of peaceful coexistence in a house by the sea.

Outside, there were bleached limbs of driftwood scattered on the shore, along with knots of slime from decomposing seaweed. The sea itself was placid glass. Grey from mirroring the clouds above, but clean of ripples. She found one of her flippers among the driftwood.

The thought of cleaning out a flooded house was too much right now.

“I’m going for a morning swim,” said Maddie. This time she didn’t invite Ryn.

Ryn was standing at the door, biting at an apple. “I am not coming this time either.”

“That’s still okay.”

The water was so cold that it bit. Her scalp, her neck and ears and face -- any part of her not protected by the wetsuit. She dove deeper for a bit. Visibility was low and it was hard to see anything. She rose to the surface again, blew water out of the snorkel.

Then, she froze. A strange sensation prickled the back of her neck, her throat going painfully dry. Her body picked up the rush of a different current, one that was too deliberate and forceful to be wind-generated, and not from her own movements. It could be a large fish. Maybe a shark. But large sharks hardly ventured into these inlets. Whatever it was that had swum past her -- she felt it again, an undercurrent against her legs.

Something emerged from the water in front of her. First, rose the pale arc of a forehead, then a bony jut of a face, skin pulled gaunt over the cheeks. Skin that looked rough, but with a faint and grainy iridescence in the grey morning.

“Ryn?”

Ryn’s eyes seemed much larger in her natural form, bulging out of her face, the irises glacial and milky, the pupils sharpened to tiny black kernels. And her mouth. Maddie felt something recoil in her stomach, that gut-squeezing fear, which she fought hard to quash. Ryn’s lips peeled back to reveal two rows of long shark teeth. A mouthful of razors.

“Thought you weren’t coming,” Maddie whispered, treading water.

Ryn tried to say something, but could only manage a glottal hiss without her human voice box. She slipped below the surface and Maddie followed. Ryn spread her arms and hung suspended in the water, her hair fanning out around her.

The rest of her-- so that was how the rest of her looked like. Her torso and arms were covered with the same iridescent scratchy-looking skin. Translucent webbing spanned the gaps between her fingers and under her arms, connecting her elbows to waist. Perhaps these were the modified forms of her paired pectoral fins. Ryn’s fingers tapered into talons. All along the sides of her torso, angling off the lines of her ribs, were the slashes of her gills, the arches lacking an opercular plate and exposed like a shark’s. When Ryn turned around -- slowly, as though she were aware Maddie was studying her, the dorsal fin flared from her back, like the fin of a sailfish, ridged with spines, descending from the nape of her neck to the base of her vertebral column.

And of course, there was her tail. That famous mermaid tail. The caudal fin: seven feet long by itself, grey like a humpback whale’s skin, but completely covered with scales. A palisade of fine spines, a modified caudal keel, ran along its length. The tail narrowed and then splayed out into symmetrical lobes. In the split between the lobes, was a curious pointed structure, like the barb of a stingray.

Ryn came closer, until her face was inches away from Maddie. Perhaps she was trying to gauge fear. Maddie put her hand on Ryn’s cheek. The skin was sandpapery, like the dermal denticles of a shark. There was the odd scale here and there; this was what was causing the opalescence. She touched the tip of her thumb to the corner of Ryn’s mouth, very near to those teeth. She did not break her gaze.

Something closed around Maddie’s other wrist. It was Ryn’s webbed hand. Beckoning her. Ryn wiggled a shoulder at her, and Maddie understood.

She gripped Ryn’s shoulder with both hands, trying to avoid the thorny dorsal fin, and then Ryn took off. Her body and tail undulated powerfully, propelling them both forward at a tremendous speed, nearly throwing Maddie off.

It was a rather absurd and numbing realisation that Maddie had -- how strange it was to be carried away by a mermaid.

Ryn didn't seem to tire; her streamlined body was nearly twice Maddie’s length, undulating, muscling them through the sea, out to open water. Her movements were seamless, and they made Maddie’s strokes seem clumsy. Ryn belonged here. She fit so much better here.

She dove down a few times and then jetted them both upwards at top speed so they burst through the surface like a mini explosion. Maddie shouted with the exhilaration of it all.

When they finally stopped swimming, Maddie looked around, treading water. The shoreline wasn't visible, and land was a vague green shape in the distance. The sea was rougher here, and she lay on her back, kicking a bit to stay afloat. Ryn floated beside her.

“That,” said Maddie, “was the most amazing ride of my life. Better than any Knott’s Berry Farm roller coaster.”

Ryn couldn't speak without her human vocal cords, but she did try to smile. The result was a rather disconcerting grimace that made Maddie laugh.

“We should go back now,” said Maddie, at last. She had absolutely no idea where they were, which direction was home, and how far away they had wandered. In the distance, was a fishing trawler, a hazy chip in the horizon.

Ryn didn’t respond.

“Ryn?”

Still nothing. Ryn wasn’t looking at her. Then, all of a sudden, she whipped her head around, as though agitated. She _was_ getting agitated. Her pupils had contracted even more, and the features of her face seemed less controlled, more predatory. She swam a furious circle around Maddie, and then another.

“Ryn,” said Maddie, struggling to remain calm. Then, louder: “ _Ryn_. What is it? Look at me. Please.”

Ryn seemed to come back to herself. She stopped her frantic swimming, and Maddie could have sworn that something so human, something so sorrowful and familiar passed through her expression. She took Maddie’s shoulders in her hands and gripped them. She stared hard at Maddie and hissed through her teeth.

“I can’t understand you.”

Ryn snarled at her, bared her teeth, then let go of Maddie and swam away swiftly.

Maddie was incredulous. “Where are you going? I can’t stay here on my own.”

But she was gone.

Maddie treaded water for awhile, moving her arms and legs in laboured circles. she’d been doing this for some time now, and she was getting tired. What had happened-- _why_ had Ryn just abandoned her? Something had changed her so abruptly, her human consciousness switched off so completely. Maddie thought of Ben and that time he was nearly killed in the water. Ryn had attacked him, snapped at his neck and he’d just managed to escape. She was unpredictable in the water. But she was also _Ryn._

It was time to face the facts, though. Here she was, alone in the middle of the Pacific. She could try -- but there was no telling where Bristol Cove was, or which way the currents would sweep her. She couldn’t stay here treading water forever. She had to not panic, not let her muscles seize with cramp, or her brain cloud with fear. And she had to swim.

So she did, for as long as she could. It might have been an hour or longer. It might have been two. Every now and then, she stopped, treaded water, floated on her back, and shouted for Ryn. But the sea was getting choppier, and every time she called out, she got a mouthful of salt. There wasn’t even a boat in sight.

Just when Maddie thought she couldn’t swim anymore, someone took hold of her from behind. Relief washed through her, at the rough hands, the taut sensation of claws against her abdomen.

_Where have you been_ , she wanted to shout, but she was too exhausted.

All she could do was cling on as Ryn propelled them through the water, keeping close to the surface so Maddie could lift her head up to breathe.

At last, they came back to the coves and inlets of the coast. Ryn’s unerring sense of direction brought them back to the very same beach with Helen’s log cabin. Maddie stumbled onto the shore and sat down on the sand. Every part of her body ached, and she was trembling. Her snorkel was long gone and her arm was bleeding. One of Ryn’s dorsal spines must have gashed through her wetsuit and cut her.

Ryn slithered onto land beside Maddie, the spines and fins retracting into her flesh, her gills closing up. Scales flaked off her skin, and her teeth and jawbone rearranged itself with the creak of shifting bones. As soon as she had vocal cords, she was gasping, her voice shrill with pain. Her tail fell off in bloody chunks, revealing human legs.

Then she was back to her human shape. The shape that Maddie knew best.

“Ryn,” said Maddie, “are you okay?”

“Yes,” said Ryn. “Are you?”

“Not really.” Maddie tried to control her anger and shock and calm her shivering. “What happened out there? Why were you gone so long -- actually, _why_ did you leave in the first place?”

“You are angry with me?”

It would have been easy to say yes. But Maddie tried patience instead. “I was scared. You brought me out into the open ocean and left me there. I want to know why.”

“We passed the place,” Ryn began. She swallowed and looked away. “The same place where sister was caught in human nets. And after that-- I am sorry. I do not know how to tell you why. I do not know what happened.”

But Maddie knew. At least part of it. She would never be able to explain it, though, and definitely not right now.

The whole human thing was not just imitation. It was more than just being able to experience every inch of the messed up spectrum of human feelings. It was the language of humans that Ryn had to learn, the language that complicated the purest and easiest of truths, that put names to concepts, that explained and exploited instincts and reflexes, that trotted out reasons and more reasons behind those reasons. It was an unending game of matching yourself up to what you knew. An unending game of breaking new territory, getting lost over and over again, grasping at lost things, fighting the fear of being lost. Human beings wound layers and layers around themselves, and then fought through those same layers to get in close with one another. It could take a lifetime to know someone, and not everybody had that kind of time. Just look at her and Ben.

Maddie couldn’t explain all of this. Not when she herself was so corrupted with this whole convoluted language of being human.

She could, however, use Ryn’s words back at her. They were the closest to the truth, the nearest to the heart.

With Ryn’s hand in her own, she kissed her, felt the human warmth generated by both their bodies.

“You, Ryn, are love,” said Maddie. “And love is good. Therefore you are good. That is all.”

  
  
  


 

They found a shell on the beach. It was a chalk-coloured half of a bivalve, old calcium carbonate, nothing extraordinary.  There was a hole in it. Probably because a whelk had used its radula to drill through the shell and suck out the creature that once lived within.

Ryn picked it up and gave it to Maddie.

When they arrived at Donna’s grave, Maddie laid it to rest together with the other shells. Now there were forty-three.

And after that, they went back to the shore and collapsed there, together. The sun was out and the sand was warm on their backs. Behind them was the flooded house, and at their feet, the sea. Maddie closed her eyes and fell asleep in Ryn’s arms.

  
  
  


 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading :)
> 
> tumblr is @anagrammaddict


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